What Does Genesis 41:31 Mean?

"And the plenty will be unknown in the land by reason of the famine that will follow, for it will be very severe." Joseph returns to the point of verse 30 with the additional qualification: the famine will be "very severe." The two-verse emphasis on the forgetting and unknowing of the preceding plenty: verse 30's "forgotten" and verse 31's "unknown": is the interpretive equivalent of the dream's double imagery of consumption without satisfaction. The famine is specifically bad; it is severe enough to make the abundance functionally nonexistent in retrospect.

The severity of the famine: "very severe": is the basis for the urgency of Joseph's practical proposal. A mild famine could be survived without extraordinary preparation. A severe famine requires extraordinary measures. The characterization of the coming famine as very severe in verse 31 justifies the one-fifth levy (not a quarter or a tenth but a fifth: substantial enough to capitalize seven years of storage) and the network of city-based storehouses that Joseph will propose in verses 33 to 36. The administrative scale of the response must match the severity of the problem the interpretation has disclosed.

"By reason of the famine that will follow": the causal relationship between the famine's occurrence and the forgetting of the plenty is causal. The severe famine does specifically come after the plenty; it causes the plenty to be unknown. The experience of the famine rewrites the memory and evaluation of the preceding years. What seemed like abundance during the good years will be reframed as insufficient preparation in retrospect. This is the experiential dynamic of food crisis: the good years feel permanently inadequate when the crisis arrives.